Love Letter to my Body...

Dear Body,

After 75 years I am aware of your fragility and impermanence,
and yet you still struggle to remain -
as difficult as that has become...

I know this life experience has been very hard for you...
I will do my best to take care of you - to comfort you...
Body, just rest now; allow yourself to sink down
and relax - sleep...

You don't have to keep it all together...

(deep breath and body releases its tensions)

I know you suffer - and I'm sorry for
how you labor and struggle.

You have done well to house me here with all that
you have been through - and I have taken you for
granted.

I will help you as much as I can while you still continue
to support me here...

I am sad that you are declining - my companion.

I don't know how much longer you can sustain me here.
I am sorry that I haven't always treated you well;
not eating the right foods; indulging in what *tastes* good
to the palate - and gave me comfort.

Needing care for yourself - you help me to caregive another -
draining your life energy...
But you just keep going as best you can...

I will give you rest and comfort now...
In the elder years...

With deep gratitude...

Your Indweller...

Mystic Meandering
Jan 25, 2025

~

Photo - moi 
1949

 

Stand Still. Listen. - Kathleen Knipp

I returned to the cabin at dusk.  As I was unlocking the door,
I heard a panicked voice leave a message on my answering
machine (yes, an actual answering machine - remember
those?)  My guest, who had set out for a hike with promises
to turn back early, was lost.  Very lost.  Darkness falls quickly
in the winter desert; the temperature can drop 20 degrees in an
hour.  She'd gathered her altitude, longitude, and latitude from 
her technology, but her data points did not reveal the trail.

So, I did what any experienced hiker would do.  I commanded
her to stop speaking and to listen carefully.  Then, I read her
a poem.

It was the same poem I'd received almost a decade earlier from
a wise and seasoned outdoorswoman one evening when I had
gotten turned around in the woods behind my home in Quebec.
It begins:

"Stand still.  The trees ahead and the bushes beside you
Are not lost.  Wherever you are is called Here...
The forest breathes.  Listen.  It answers..."

By the time I'd ascended 500 feet, running full throttle with
my headlamp lighting up loose rocks, roots, and downed
trees - hazards for chronically sprained ankles - we made
contact again.  She had located the elusive path shortly after
our call and was now making her way down.

Stand still.  Listen.

When we can't find our way, we try our best to figure out
what to do.  We look for solutions, consult, gather information.
Do I turn left or right?  Speak up or hold silence?  Innovate or
uphold tradition?...

Listening - true listening - is not an activity.  It's not about
listening to something,or even for something.  It's not
listening to the mental chatter or the wisdom of the body.
Rather, it's about dropping into the primacy of experiencing,

into the field of pure receptivity, free from egoic interference.
It's resting in complete availability until the next step becomes
perfectly clear.

Listening.  It's what I teach.  It's what I practice.  It's what I
humbly learn and relearn daily through my own missteps and
moments of distraction.  When I fall into the habit of believing
that "I" can figure it out, that "I" make the decisions, that "I"
must find my way, the field narrows and"I" end up running
around in circles.

"Stand still.  The forest knows
Where you are.
You must let it find you."

Kathleen Knipp
Pathless Yoga

The poem "Lost" by David Wagoner

~

Photo taken by my brother
at Sunday River Ski Resort
in Maine.  He is a volunteer
ski patrol there...

~

Personal Note:

I love this piece by Kathleen.  It moved me deeply, not only
for it's message but because Kathleen did not give a "non-dual"
answer, dismissing her predicament, she gave a loving, caring,
compassionate answer to the woman who had gotten lost on
the trail - by reading comforting words from a poem about
 not being lost, about standing still and listening to the trees
 for the way to go.
And then Kathleen took action and went to help her friend
in trouble.  She acted with love from her heart...

In these very troubling times around the world, we need to
support each other in dealing with the reality we are faced with
 - in our  seeming"lostness"; as we navigate
a way "Home..." and remember our Infiniteness...

MM

Courage - Oriah & O'Donohue...

I must find the ways, the people, the places, the practices
 that support me in being all
I truly am.

I must cultivate ways of being that let me feel the warmth
 of encouragement against
my heart when it is weary.
I must be fiercely and compassionately honest
with myself  about those choices and actions
that are inconsistent with my essential nature...
I must find the song lines that run through
my life, the melodies that remind me of what
I really am and call me gently back to
acting on this knowing.
I must learn to dance.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer

From: The Dance

I took her words and put then into prose poetry form.

No day or minute offers itself twice.
There is an amazing serenity
when life has been lived to the full.
When the true dream of life has been neglected
or postponed, there is helpless regret.
Life is a huge, urgent invitation.
As Rainer Rilke says:
It is so easy to lose your way -
to end up respectable, trusted and
admirably fulfilling your role.
Yet the whole time you could be suffocating
 inside and no one sees it.
So much depends on how you embrace
the world within you.
There is some limbo in which each
life is caught.
The air is poor in limbo;
grey is the one color there.
Stagnation is the status quo.
All things seem blurred in this half-sleep.
Boredom and indifference conspire to keep
the anxiety buried.
There is endless chatter, but nothing said.
Perhaps it is time to leave limbo.
To awaken: to really come alive…

John O’Donohue

These are his words that I put into
prose poetry form.